9 ms·

Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying

152 points by Libertatea 13y ago

ihsw 13y ago
Can we label these defenders of spying "Statists"? Surely all of their political beliefs fall flat when you consider that they will happily sacrifice any and all values for the advancement of the State. Fascists would also be appropriate.
- camus 13y ago
  USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. In the future , there will be no need for conspiracy, corporation will run the show directly , when all states are bankrupts. That's the only likely future for mankind.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    > USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. Orwell (1944): "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'" The fascist state was very much totalitarian, and the relationship with corporations wasn't conspirational, they were co-opted into the state for the benefit of the state's goals. Individuals were enabled and allowed to attain wealth through this scheme, but that doesn't mean they ran the show, at all.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      Chomsky: "The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies." The corporate state is very much totalitarian, and the relationship with politicians isn't conspirational, they are co-opted into the "holistic system of systems" for the benefit of corporate goals. Individuals are enabled and allowed to attain wealth and fame through this scheme, and are allowed to choose drape colors, but that doesn't mean they run the show, at all.
      - mseebach 13y ago
        What nonsense. The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS. Edit: Terms like "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds. When they are casually applied where they don't belong, they derail the discussion (much like "Nazism", hence Godwin's Law) and prevent a real debate about real issues.
        PavlovsCat 13y ago
        The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS. How about we start small, and read the posts we're replying to, hmm? "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds. Yes, and? Where did I mention any of these? Books may be too heavy to me, but I can parse single sentences from Wikipedia, such as this one from the page about totalitarianism: The term 'an authoritarian regime' denotes a state in which the single power holder - an individual 'dictator', a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite - monopolizes political power. However, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens You see, the difference is basically that you put down slave uprisings, but don't care what color their underpants are, or wether they like you, or what they think - only in so far as that affects performance. Not sure where "making people wear flair", nodding to buzzwords or Japan fit in there, but at any rate totalitarianism, in comparison with simply controling the jugulars and assholes of golden gooses, is a silly and ineffective thing. It even sucks as strawman.
        ferdo 13y ago
        > The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. The US has the highest prison population per capita on the planet. It is most assuredly well on the road to totalitarianism.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        Corporations are creatures of the government; they can't be any more of a pure tyranny (or authoritarian regime -- tyranny really ought to be reserved for rule by military force, which while certainly common in top-down authoritarianism, is decidedly less common in corporations) than the government sponsoring them (they can be more of a current tyranny/authoritarianism than the government as a whole, but they can't be "pure" tyranny unless the government is, since any democratic capacity in the government can be applied to its control of the corporations it charters.)
perlpimp 13y ago
I think this is a good fodder for some really inquisitive investigative journalism as I doubt very much that defenders do not receive perks and kickbacks from establishment that disperses 550BILLION dollars to private contractors from taxpayers coffers to break laws, destroy constitution and make to orwellian state. Being more paranoid than less I have a inkling that this system is being installed and police is being armed because it is known that if economy collapses, these will be instruments to quell dissent and literally destroy (imprison and/or execute) opposition - of those who might well lead the revolution. Economy is doing good, but the external debt is mindboggling those who are in the place of power might know what we don't.
- mtgx 13y ago
  The scary part is that they're developing capabilities and organizing in such a way that they will be able to stop dissidents and protests before they even go out to protest, thanks to the NSA mass spying and the so called "fusion centers" with the DHS and police. They were already used against Occupy protests. At the next protest they will be much more organized and have much better capabilities to track who intends to go to protests or even who's "inciting" protests online. Think that case with the German who said on Facebook that they should visit the new NSA center in Germany, and the police visited him before he got a chance to do it. That's what we're really talking about here. If you think that developing such capabilities to stop protests is a little too paranoid for you to digest, do you really think they wouldn't do this if there was another massive protest against the banks, with the excuse that they're protecting the nation against an economic crash or whatever? The last time around, they arrested people for trying to close their bank accounts, and they weren't even that many. Let's just say that if this was an Intrade bet, I would be in favor of it happening.
  - zero_intp 13y ago
    This is the scary truth. I am familiar with aspects of an intelligence project that has as it's duty not just an internet archive, but a sweeping back-tracker to identify the source and time-start of rumors or repeated phrases and memes. I suspect it has access to all email and IM in addition to a simple web-crawler. The architects are liberal ex-hippies who just do not understand that they are building the framework for totalitarianism. I think there are a lot of us who just like playing with toys and do not evaluate the ethical ramifications of their actions.
brown9-2 13y ago
The fact that someone is using an argument that was also used at one point in time by someone who has a loose relationship with the truth (like Cheney) doesn't make that person today into an automatic liar. If the argument was wrong when used 7-8 years ago in a somewhat different context, it's not automatically also wrong in today's context. Peter King and Michelle Bachmann might be bozos, but on the rare occasions where they agree with you it doesn't mean you are also a bozo by some sort of associative property. This seems like the most illogical of smears, to say that because person A and B have the same opinion on a single topic they are similar in all natures (reminding me of the billboards touting the fact that the Unabomber believed in global warming).
- _delirium 13y ago
  I agree it's not a logically consistent argument, but I read it as slightly different from the Unabomber-believed-in-global-warming arguments, which try to tarnish a position with a universally unpopular figure (the smoking-bans-were-first-proposed-by-Hitler argument is similar). This argument is more along the lines of alleging that "our" side sold us out by taking up the other side's positions. Among Republicans, "the GOP establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally liberal positions" is an argument that comes up now and then, and among Democrats, you see its opposite, "the Democratic establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally conservative positions". Greenwald is basically taking the 2nd view, writing an op-ed for Democrats arguing that their leadership is in cahoots with tough-on-national-security conservatives, rather than fighting for liberal values.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    It's not clear to me that the opposition of the "Democratic establishment" in 2005 was so much the idea of wiretapping some Americans by the NSA, but the fact that it was done without warrants nor was it authorized under any existing law. It seems like Congress resolved most of that opposition in the 2008 version of FISA. It's also worth pointing out that the warrantless wiretapping program of 2001-2005 and the current wiretapping authorized under 2008 FISA aren't really the same issue as what the Amash amendment yesterday would have defunded (the collection of phone metadata under section 215 of the Patriot Act). Greenwald is somewhat mixing the issues and reducing this to an issue of just "should the NSA be able to surveil Americans?".
joshuaellinger 13y ago
The clearest evidence: Pelosi voted against it. Lots of HN readers are in SF. If you want to make a difference on the NSA spying, find a credible candidate to run in the primary against her and put a little money behind it.
- 3825 13y ago
  I admire your enthusiasm but just want to remind people that it is not a done deal. People across the country tried to come together to get a replacement for Lamar Smith[1] but he still won with 63% of all votes. Change is not easy. [1]: Smith faced five challengers in the 2012 general election on November 6, 2012: Candace Duval (Dem), John-Henry Liberty (Lib), Fidel Castillo (Grn), Bill Stout (Grn), and Carlos Pena (Ind).[14] He won the race with 63% of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe... http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith-Lloyd-Doggett-win-U-S-Rep-races/-/2567674/17294152/-/owkg0w/-/index.html http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith...
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    In Texas the Democrats are working with pretty heavily gerrymandered districts. It's not really a fair fight. Also the challenge to Smith was obviously not well organized. You don't have to be Karl Rove to understand that flinging five candidates against Lamar Smith isn't a great tactic for anyone but Lamar Smith.
  - joshuaellinger 13y ago
    Primary from the right can be effective in Texas. Cruz beat Drewhurst -- totally amazing. Primary from the left have a chance in SF. You don't have to win to have an impact. You just need to make it credible. The other thing that works is, if you are a big donor in the past, then don't write that check this year. Money gets their attention.
colin_jack 13y ago
Interesting as always but I do wish Greenwald would write shorter more targeted articles.
- 1337biz 13y ago
  He probably leaves this job to the Business Insider, Medium and Quartz "journalists".
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I almost didn't vote this up. I hate calling out political leaders or parties in HN articles. However, the title was a bit of linkbait. The real point is that no, it's not true that the parties in Washington do not agree on anything. The hardcore partisans all are very happy to work with each other to secure and increase the security state. For that reason, for pointing out the traditional wisdom is wrong in this area and that the problem here is not political but systemic, it was worth a vote. I called my Representative, a Republican, to support the Amash amendment. Like a jackass, he didn't do it. I imagine Repbulican leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. Looking at the Democrats (the other major US political party), I imagine Democratic leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. While the consitutional system seems broken in the US - the state is conducting blanket surveillance and then deciding later what to review -- the political system, whereby parties gain and maintain power, seems to be working very well. The good news is that the wheels almost came off the wagon: the amendment was almost passed. That means next time we'll all need just to lobby twice as hard to get our rep's attention. The other good news is that members of both parties came out to support the amendment, which means that the issue of the security state cuts both ways. Both parties could easily flip on this given enough pressure. It's just our job to make sure the pressure is there (while acknowledging that there is a vital need for national security and SIGINT)
- griffordson 13y ago
  66% of the Judiciary Committee who voted, voted for the Amash amendment. I find that very encouraging. And Sensenbrenner, a principal author of the Patriot Act, is outraged by the secret interpretation being used to justify these programs: http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=343546 http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    Logic is on our side here. Of course, that never counts for much in politics :) The key problem is that there is no system of checks and balances, no matter what your personal congress-critter might say. Terms that are interpreted one way when the law is created get interpreted another way in secret. Going after certain people becomes checking up on everybody. Checking up on everybody becomes store-now, search-later. The government's natural oversight and regulatory authority over commercial businesses is being used as leverage to collect data on the population against our will. It's just out of control. I'm concerned that a Constitutional Amendment is really what it's going to take to put this genie back in the bottle. Sure, you stop NSA, but does that stop the FBI from picking up the keys? Stop any of a dozen other agencies from creating similar systems? I'm optimistic about this particular fight, but the overall war is looking like whack-a-mole out there to me.
rayiner 13y ago
Old people (Nancy Pelosi is 73, Stenny Hoyer is 74) don't see the big deal about internet privacy. News at 11.
joshuaellinger 13y ago
I hope Snowden/Greenwald has evidence of the NSA spying on Congress. That would change the tone of the debate overnight. Remember how pissy the mainstream journalist got over the DOJ monitoring its phone lines. It's easy to justify spying when it is on those terrorists. Not so easy when the lens is pointed at you.
amerika_blog 13y ago
Even the leftist Guardian is noticing this? Wow. I just don't know if truth and politics are compatible. We may need a solution outside of politics.
SkyMarshal 13y ago
Key point: "To say that there is a major sea change underway - not just in terms of surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security institutions, and civil liberties - is to state the obvious. But perhaps the most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence. That's why the only defenders of the NSA at this point are the decaying establishment leadership of both political parties whose allegiance is to the sprawling permanent power faction in Washington and the private industry that owns and controls it. They're aligned against long-time liberals, the new breed of small government conservatives, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, many of their own members, and increasingly the American people, who have grown tired of, and immune to, the relentless fear-mongering."

152 points by Libertatea 13y ago

ihsw 13y ago

Can we label these defenders of spying "Statists"? Surely all of their political beliefs fall flat when you consider that they will happily sacrifice any and all values for the advancement of the State. Fascists would also be appropriate.

camus 13y ago
USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. In the future , there will be no need for conspiracy, corporation will run the show directly , when all states are bankrupts. That's the only likely future for mankind.
- mseebach 13y ago
  > USA is already a fascist state by Mussolini's definition. Orwell (1944): "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'" The fascist state was very much totalitarian, and the relationship with corporations wasn't conspirational, they were co-opted into the state for the benefit of the state's goals. Individuals were enabled and allowed to attain wealth through this scheme, but that doesn't mean they ran the show, at all.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Chomsky: "The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies." The corporate state is very much totalitarian, and the relationship with politicians isn't conspirational, they are co-opted into the "holistic system of systems" for the benefit of corporate goals. Individuals are enabled and allowed to attain wealth and fame through this scheme, and are allowed to choose drape colors, but that doesn't mean they run the show, at all.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      What nonsense. The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS. Edit: Terms like "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds. When they are casually applied where they don't belong, they derail the discussion (much like "Nazism", hence Godwin's Law) and prevent a real debate about real issues.
      - PavlovsCat 13y ago
        The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. Read a book, FFS. How about we start small, and read the posts we're replying to, hmm? "Totalitarian", "Fascist" and "Communism" have real, historical backgrounds. Yes, and? Where did I mention any of these? Books may be too heavy to me, but I can parse single sentences from Wikipedia, such as this one from the page about totalitarianism: The term 'an authoritarian regime' denotes a state in which the single power holder - an individual 'dictator', a committee or a junta or an otherwise small group of political elite - monopolizes political power. However, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens You see, the difference is basically that you put down slave uprisings, but don't care what color their underpants are, or wether they like you, or what they think - only in so far as that affects performance. Not sure where "making people wear flair", nodding to buzzwords or Japan fit in there, but at any rate totalitarianism, in comparison with simply controling the jugulars and assholes of golden gooses, is a silly and ineffective thing. It even sucks as strawman.
      - ferdo 13y ago
        > The United States, for all it's faults, is not a totalitarian state. The US has the highest prison population per capita on the planet. It is most assuredly well on the road to totalitarianism.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      Corporations are creatures of the government; they can't be any more of a pure tyranny (or authoritarian regime -- tyranny really ought to be reserved for rule by military force, which while certainly common in top-down authoritarianism, is decidedly less common in corporations) than the government sponsoring them (they can be more of a current tyranny/authoritarianism than the government as a whole, but they can't be "pure" tyranny unless the government is, since any democratic capacity in the government can be applied to its control of the corporations it charters.)

perlpimp 13y ago

I think this is a good fodder for some really inquisitive investigative journalism as I doubt very much that defenders do not receive perks and kickbacks from establishment that disperses 550BILLION dollars to private contractors from taxpayers coffers to break laws, destroy constitution and make to orwellian state. Being more paranoid than less I have a inkling that this system is being installed and police is being armed because it is known that if economy collapses, these will be instruments to quell dissent and literally destroy (imprison and/or execute) opposition - of those who might well lead the revolution. Economy is doing good, but the external debt is mindboggling those who are in the place of power might know what we don't.

mtgx 13y ago
The scary part is that they're developing capabilities and organizing in such a way that they will be able to stop dissidents and protests before they even go out to protest, thanks to the NSA mass spying and the so called "fusion centers" with the DHS and police. They were already used against Occupy protests. At the next protest they will be much more organized and have much better capabilities to track who intends to go to protests or even who's "inciting" protests online. Think that case with the German who said on Facebook that they should visit the new NSA center in Germany, and the police visited him before he got a chance to do it. That's what we're really talking about here. If you think that developing such capabilities to stop protests is a little too paranoid for you to digest, do you really think they wouldn't do this if there was another massive protest against the banks, with the excuse that they're protecting the nation against an economic crash or whatever? The last time around, they arrested people for trying to close their bank accounts, and they weren't even that many. Let's just say that if this was an Intrade bet, I would be in favor of it happening.
- zero_intp 13y ago
  This is the scary truth. I am familiar with aspects of an intelligence project that has as it's duty not just an internet archive, but a sweeping back-tracker to identify the source and time-start of rumors or repeated phrases and memes. I suspect it has access to all email and IM in addition to a simple web-crawler. The architects are liberal ex-hippies who just do not understand that they are building the framework for totalitarianism. I think there are a lot of us who just like playing with toys and do not evaluate the ethical ramifications of their actions.

brown9-2 13y ago

The fact that someone is using an argument that was also used at one point in time by someone who has a loose relationship with the truth (like Cheney) doesn't make that person today into an automatic liar. If the argument was wrong when used 7-8 years ago in a somewhat different context, it's not automatically also wrong in today's context. Peter King and Michelle Bachmann might be bozos, but on the rare occasions where they agree with you it doesn't mean you are also a bozo by some sort of associative property. This seems like the most illogical of smears, to say that because person A and B have the same opinion on a single topic they are similar in all natures (reminding me of the billboards touting the fact that the Unabomber believed in global warming).

_delirium 13y ago
I agree it's not a logically consistent argument, but I read it as slightly different from the Unabomber-believed-in-global-warming arguments, which try to tarnish a position with a universally unpopular figure (the smoking-bans-were-first-proposed-by-Hitler argument is similar). This argument is more along the lines of alleging that "our" side sold us out by taking up the other side's positions. Among Republicans, "the GOP establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally liberal positions" is an argument that comes up now and then, and among Democrats, you see its opposite, "the Democratic establishment has sold us out by taking up traditionally conservative positions". Greenwald is basically taking the 2nd view, writing an op-ed for Democrats arguing that their leadership is in cahoots with tough-on-national-security conservatives, rather than fighting for liberal values.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  It's not clear to me that the opposition of the "Democratic establishment" in 2005 was so much the idea of wiretapping some Americans by the NSA, but the fact that it was done without warrants nor was it authorized under any existing law. It seems like Congress resolved most of that opposition in the 2008 version of FISA. It's also worth pointing out that the warrantless wiretapping program of 2001-2005 and the current wiretapping authorized under 2008 FISA aren't really the same issue as what the Amash amendment yesterday would have defunded (the collection of phone metadata under section 215 of the Patriot Act). Greenwald is somewhat mixing the issues and reducing this to an issue of just "should the NSA be able to surveil Americans?".

joshuaellinger 13y ago

The clearest evidence: Pelosi voted against it. Lots of HN readers are in SF. If you want to make a difference on the NSA spying, find a credible candidate to run in the primary against her and put a little money behind it.

3825 13y ago
I admire your enthusiasm but just want to remind people that it is not a done deal. People across the country tried to come together to get a replacement for Lamar Smith[1] but he still won with 63% of all votes. Change is not easy. [1]: Smith faced five challengers in the 2012 general election on November 6, 2012: Candace Duval (Dem), John-Henry Liberty (Lib), Fidel Castillo (Grn), Bill Stout (Grn), and Carlos Pena (Ind).[14] He won the race with 63% of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas,_2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe... http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith-Lloyd-Doggett-win-U-S-Rep-races/-/2567674/17294152/-/owkg0w/-/index.html http://www.ksat.com/news/politics/Joaquin-Castro-Lamar-Smith...
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  In Texas the Democrats are working with pretty heavily gerrymandered districts. It's not really a fair fight. Also the challenge to Smith was obviously not well organized. You don't have to be Karl Rove to understand that flinging five candidates against Lamar Smith isn't a great tactic for anyone but Lamar Smith.
- joshuaellinger 13y ago
  Primary from the right can be effective in Texas. Cruz beat Drewhurst -- totally amazing. Primary from the left have a chance in SF. You don't have to win to have an impact. You just need to make it credible. The other thing that works is, if you are a big donor in the past, then don't write that check this year. Money gets their attention.

colin_jack 13y ago

Interesting as always but I do wish Greenwald would write shorter more targeted articles.

1337biz 13y ago
He probably leaves this job to the Business Insider, Medium and Quartz "journalists".

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I almost didn't vote this up. I hate calling out political leaders or parties in HN articles. However, the title was a bit of linkbait. The real point is that no, it's not true that the parties in Washington do not agree on anything. The hardcore partisans all are very happy to work with each other to secure and increase the security state. For that reason, for pointing out the traditional wisdom is wrong in this area and that the problem here is not political but systemic, it was worth a vote. I called my Representative, a Republican, to support the Amash amendment. Like a jackass, he didn't do it. I imagine Repbulican leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. Looking at the Democrats (the other major US political party), I imagine Democratic leadership did a lot of leaning on members to vote the amendment down. While the consitutional system seems broken in the US - the state is conducting blanket surveillance and then deciding later what to review -- the political system, whereby parties gain and maintain power, seems to be working very well. The good news is that the wheels almost came off the wagon: the amendment was almost passed. That means next time we'll all need just to lobby twice as hard to get our rep's attention. The other good news is that members of both parties came out to support the amendment, which means that the issue of the security state cuts both ways. Both parties could easily flip on this given enough pressure. It's just our job to make sure the pressure is there (while acknowledging that there is a vital need for national security and SIGINT)

griffordson 13y ago
66% of the Judiciary Committee who voted, voted for the Amash amendment. I find that very encouraging. And Sensenbrenner, a principal author of the Patriot Act, is outraged by the secret interpretation being used to justify these programs: http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=343546 http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docu...
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  Logic is on our side here. Of course, that never counts for much in politics :) The key problem is that there is no system of checks and balances, no matter what your personal congress-critter might say. Terms that are interpreted one way when the law is created get interpreted another way in secret. Going after certain people becomes checking up on everybody. Checking up on everybody becomes store-now, search-later. The government's natural oversight and regulatory authority over commercial businesses is being used as leverage to collect data on the population against our will. It's just out of control. I'm concerned that a Constitutional Amendment is really what it's going to take to put this genie back in the bottle. Sure, you stop NSA, but does that stop the FBI from picking up the keys? Stop any of a dozen other agencies from creating similar systems? I'm optimistic about this particular fight, but the overall war is looking like whack-a-mole out there to me.

rayiner 13y ago

Old people (Nancy Pelosi is 73, Stenny Hoyer is 74) don't see the big deal about internet privacy. News at 11.

joshuaellinger 13y ago

I hope Snowden/Greenwald has evidence of the NSA spying on Congress. That would change the tone of the debate overnight. Remember how pissy the mainstream journalist got over the DOJ monitoring its phone lines. It's easy to justify spying when it is on those terrorists. Not so easy when the lens is pointed at you.

amerika_blog 13y ago

Even the leftist Guardian is noticing this? Wow. I just don't know if truth and politics are compatible. We may need a solution outside of politics.

SkyMarshal 13y ago

Key point: "To say that there is a major sea change underway - not just in terms of surveillance policy but broader issues of secrecy, trust in national security institutions, and civil liberties - is to state the obvious. But perhaps the most significant and enduring change will be the erosion of the trite, tired prism of partisan simplicity through which American politics has been understood over the last decade. What one sees in this debate is not Democrat v. Republican or left v. right. One sees authoritarianism v. individualism, fealty to The National Security State v. a belief in the need to constrain and check it, insider Washington loyalty v. outsider independence. That's why the only defenders of the NSA at this point are the decaying establishment leadership of both political parties whose allegiance is to the sprawling permanent power faction in Washington and the private industry that owns and controls it. They're aligned against long-time liberals, the new breed of small government conservatives, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, many of their own members, and increasingly the American people, who have grown tired of, and immune to, the relentless fear-mongering."